Sanity Saver Series: Staying Same With Your Actual Life

Once upon a time, in a land far far away called Los Angeles, a newborn baby girl was born. She sized up the other rookies around her in the nursery, and it appeared everyone else had received a handbook as a part of their “Welcome to Life” Swag Bag, handed to them upon their exit from the womb. But by the time the books were passed to the end of the row of bassinets in the nursery, the little girl received “that” copy- the used copy that was doodled in and graffitied all over by a bunch of bored candy striper hospital volunteers.  The one with the ring of coffee stain which leaked through the thin paper onto several chapters, and she couldn’t make out the words.


The baby grew into a little girl, and despite feeling as if she did not have an adequate handbook for life, she was happy and free. She had a head full of fantasies and a heart full of dreams, and she hadn’t been exposed yet to self-doubt and the systems and expectations of others.  Eventually, she commenced to go to school, and her parents began taking her to church. She noticed a change quickly- the sudden lack of freedom of expression she felt.  It didn’t feel bad, it just felt different.  Foreign.  Strange. Confusing.  It was like not knowing the steps to a dance she thought she knew. She felt like everyone knew how to play the game but her.  So she started watching, trying to find her way and watch to see if she could figure out the rules.  Along with trying to decipher the rules, she developed feels about it.  Like, really big feels.  She wondered if she was the only one having these feels? She felt very vulnerable and insecure about these big feels and had no idea how to navigate them. ​

Oh, she looked normal from the outside, and she really legitimately enjoyed most areas of her life.  She gained a great many wonderful friends and memories along the way. Through them, she learned that so many of my big feels were easiest to cover up by experiencing humor, connection and adventure with others. Not surprisingly, those are some of her favorite memories to this day. 


But when hard times came, she felt powerless. She felt like an ant, completely run over by a semi-truck. She wore her heart on her sleeve most times, which she found was not considered appropriate in the church world or the school world. So she learned to play the game and armor up at those places.  Put the school game face on at school, and in the house of the Lord, you best don the church “holiness competition” face, lest you look like you might not be a very solid Christian.  Church was really the place where everyone looked like they had the world on a string, and all the shiny problems were buttoned up and figured out. Instead, she felt a gross incompetence, like she just wasn’t capable of measuring up. If she asked for help within the church walls, she was instructed to pray more, read the Bible more. And she was too afraid to admit that it didn’t help, and so she assumed she wasn’t performing it correctly.


Still a child, she discovered for herself that the one thing that would help to cope with the feels was writing. The expressive word poured out of her like a waterfall. She journaled for hours- and then after she had taken the edge off of the big feels, she hung out with friends and joked and laughed to balance her very deep, poetic, philosophical side.  But she still felt heavy guilt about the prayer and the Bible Studies, the things that she was told were “supposed” to help, didn’t. So she kept that inside because she had learned that it wasn’t OK to say that out loud in the church-y circles…. at least not without being judged. 


Toward the end of her college years, one of the diamonds she found in the church-y mire was a Prince. After kissing a lot of frogs, this Prince Charming was unconditionally loving and accepting. He saw her childlike, fun-loving spirit was in there, just buried beneath some big feels. But the Prince wasn’t afraid of her big feels, even when she confided in him about the praying and the Bible Studies and how she feared there must be something she was doing wrong since the results remained lackluster. This Prince just seemed to adore the transparency of her big feels and loved her unconditionally-truly loved her, for everything who she was. He loved her wounds, her flaws, her strengths, and her fragile yet loving heart. He treated her heart like a delicate treasure, and he married her 5 months after they met. After a short teaching career, she found herself pregnant, and a pattern quickly commenced: pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding- on repeat.


Almost without her noticing it, her life exploded with busyness after the arrival of her fourth child.  She had birthed those 4 babies in 5 years’ time. She was stressed. And tired. Oh, so very tired. And motherhood knocked her down like glass bottles during the Loma Prieta Earthquake of ’89. It was as if the curtain rose on the grand and intense drama and folly of “Life as a Stay at Home Mom”- where suddenly, without warning, the lights went up in an instant; (before she was ready)- and they were intrusively blinding and hot. The stage was large, echoing, intimidating and unfamiliar. The costumes were scratchy and uncomfortable; the makeup was heavy, stifling and greasy. The dialogue was foreign to her, and it was as if everyone else knew their lines flawlessly- and performed with confidence and eloquence-except for her.  She felt lonely; afraid, and embarrassed. If she closed her eyes, she could almost hear the imagined snickering and giggling from a dark auditorium of an audience who clearly saw that she had no idea what she was doing.


She no longer had time to journal, barely had time to shower and throw on some mascara and lip gloss, let alone pick up a pen and write about it. She could barely talk about the big feels without bursting into tears. Even if she managed to find some free time, sheer exhaustion took over like a tidal wave and she would fall asleep as if someone had touched her with a Magic Narcolepsy Wand. A creative outlet was nowhere on her priority list. To which end, she paid a price dearly.


Like a scene from a horror movie, the big feels began to morph into bigger and more complex feels. Feels of inadequacy feel of depression, feels of body shaming, feels of worthlessness, feels of self-doubt at every decision she made, fears of being a horrible mom. Feels of invisibility began to melt the thin remnants of her waning shreds of belief in herself as she watched the Prince’s career skyrocket while she was at home changing diapers. Then the guilt of feeling unfulfilled and jealous of her Prince fogged over her so thick she could barely see the end of her nose. The feels became so big and so strong, some days she could barely get out of bed, choked by the big feels as they swirled around her body like an endless procession of heavy, black smoky cloaks of suffocation.  The only thing that helped alleviate the power of those feels was getting together with friends and partaking of a poison from a goblet, which suddenly started becoming more plentiful and showing up everywhere she went.


She had partaken of this poison on many prior occasions, but it never felt like a solution to any of life’s problems to her.  Now slowly, it was like a creeping cancer began to snake its’ way into her life and her body. The poison started making appearances In the cul-de-sac with the other moms.  At playdates. At children's’ birthday parties. At the PTA meetings. Even at the Bible Studies. At the Prince’s work functions. Everywhere she went, the poison was there. It was as if she could almost hear it whisper, “I can help you. Drink me and you’ll remember who you were. Drink more of me and you’ll feel like the fairest in all the land. Drink even more of me and you won’t care—and you won’t feel.”


Because she could no longer handle these big feels coupled with the exhaustion, she answered the call of the poisonous siren and she began to drink it regularly.  She drank it to feel better, then she drank it to escape. It became something she looked forward to- and it became the key that helped her to avoid feeling like that actor who didn’t know her lines during the performance. All seemed well again! Like when she was that young, free-spirited child! She fancied herself a witty, charismatic dreamer once again- the poison was indeed the solution to regaining the fun, carefree, happy-go-lucky version of herself, whose conversations didn’t revolve around brands of laundry detergent and which playdoh recipe was acceptable to make for the preschool… the girl she so desperately missed being. 


Until. The poison stopped working. It made her sick, it made her start to feel emotionally empty. Eventually, it started to feel like a lover who had abandoned her. In desperation, she tried to drink more poison, which only lasted a day or two and then more was required again.  Instead of feeling burdenless, she felt chained. Instead of feeling fun-loving, she hated herself. Instead of feeling happy, she felt positively miserable. When she dared to step in front of a mirror, she couldn’t look herself in the eye, so she quit eating and kept trying to drink more and more poison to try and cover up the incomprehensible demoralization she felt. And then she hit a bottom so low, an internal place so chilling, the despair, the acute agony and the crippling anxiety overtook her body and soul to the point where she wanted to tear open the door of her palace and run as fast as her broken and terrified shell of a body could manage, and with one last excruciating burst of effort, she would use her final gasp of life to catapult herself off of a cliff and leap into the ever blackening darkness where she would never feel any feels ever again.  She wondered if anyone would even realize she was gone, or the earth would rejoice over one less person hogging up valuable oxygen. 


Thankfully, her Prince recognized how sick she was. He scooped her up into his arms and lovingly carried her feeble body and shattered soul to a kingdom far far away. She fled from the kingdom the first time- too terrified to be without the crutch of the poisoned goblet, and fearing she would fail. So, as difficult as it was to watch her do this to herself, the Prince knew her only chance of saving her was to return her to the kingdom and try again. He gently and lovingly scooped her up a second time and returned her to the kingdom where she could be healed…. and more importantly, where she would learn to heal herself. 


This time, for some reason beyond comprehension, she stayed. Maybe it was because she was so depleted she couldn’t get off of the bed in the kingdom where she had been placed. She was crushed and defeated emotionally and mentally, and traumatically exhausted physically. For days on end, she could do nothing but weep.  Helpless to do anything for herself, the kingdom’s Spirit Guides cared for her frail and hopeless heart. They gently washed the stale smell of the poison off of her, and they loved her-and commenced to teach her how to love herself. She began to sleep again, and she began to eat again. Gradually, color returned to her cheeks and a measure of strength returned to her body.  Ironically, the Spirit Guides reunited her with her love for journaling- and healing was eventually found through the frenzied and emotional words which couldn’t seem to flow from her insides out onto the paper fast enough. The Spirit Guides taught her how to live without drinking the poison, *ANY* poison- although it was going to continue to be all around her- and eventually she realized she didn’t actually even want to drink the poison. The poison had simply been a band-aid covering up wounds that would otherwise be exposed.  For it was never really about the poison in the first place- the poison was but a symptom and could have easily been substituted for any other damaging, self-harming habit. (Shopping, cutting, sex, whatever.)


Day by day, one step at a time, the Spirit Guides helped her reveal the roots of why she drank the poison in the first place. They showed her how to remove both the roots and the thorny thicket that had built up all around the wilted roses of her essence. But she had to do the work herself, at this point, she was well enough to begin the lifelong process of continually monitoring and caring for her own garden. When they deemed her ready, The Spirit Guides sent her on her way with a basket of brand new shiny gardening tools and a new journal to use as she set off on her fresh journey. Fragile at first, she emerged from their safe and sacred kingdom. Slowly, she began to learn how to live life, tending to the garden, pulling weeds when necessary, and fertilizing when more growth was needed. She still to this day consistently seeks the wisdom and advice of the faithful friendship of her Spirit Guides.


The Prince was waiting for her back at her palace, cheering her on every step of the way. For he knew in order for it to last, she had to do the internal work at the kingdom on her own. That was the ONLY way it would truly work- she had to do it for herself.  Upon her return, his eyes filled with tears of joy as he ran to her and threw his arms around her and squeezed as if he might lose her if he dared to let go. For she had become a better version of herself since she was now unafraid of her flaws and insecurities. Over the following 7 years, the Prince's tender, unconditional, relentless love for her resulted in her bearing 4 more babies with him.




Her rapidly growing tribe of Spirit Guides continue to share tools with the Princess, and she shares hers with them. Here are just a few of the most beautiful flowers produced in her garden, with the assistance of her Spirit Guides, the unwavering support of her Prince, and a God of Her Own Understanding:

- Using her Past as the Momentum to Propel her Forward into her Future. 
- Cutting the chains of her past resentments. 
- Setting and Maintaining Healthy Boundaries with Others.
- Owning Her Part in an Issue.
- Offering Apologies Freely.
- Helping Others for Fun and for Free.
- Cleaning Up Her Side of the Street.
- Choosing to Respond instead of React.
- Practicing the Ability to Not Take Things Personally.
- Backing Out of Situations That Are None of her Business. 
- Offering Respect and Support When She May Not Agree.
- Practicing Active Listening and Seeking Information from Others.
- Being Coachable and Having a Teachable Heart.
- Being Trustworthy and Holding Other People’s Secrets Close to her Heart.
- Practicing Discernment by Learning What is Hers to Attend To, and What is NOT Hers to Attend to.
- Practicing Loving with Detachment
- Not Rescuing Others From an Opportunity For Them to Help Themselves. 
- Realizing that She Can’t Be All Things to all People 
- Accepting that Serenity Entails the Absence of Figuring Everything Out.
- Peacefulness Practice Includes Being OK Sitting in the Questions. 
- Practicing Gentleness with her Humanity (i.e. The Absence of Shaming Herself for Having Natural Human Desires, Yet Loving Herself and Others Too Much to Allow Those Desires to Wreak Havoc and Chaos.)
- Ceasing Fighting the Flow of the Universe, and Instead Working to Watch What’s Happening and Join in that Harmonious Dance.
- Practicing Non-Judgement in All Situations.
- Becoming ”The Watcher” of Her Thoughts, Without Attaching Them to Her Character.
- Realizing It’s Natural to Fear Change- And Realizing She Has a Choice to View it as an Adventure. 
- Remembering that People Don’t Do Things TO Her, People Just Do What they Do.
- Allowing Things to Unfold Organically, Instead of Forcing Her Agenda.
- Remembering to Ask Instead of Assume.
- Practicing the Bravery Required to Freefall into the Mystery of Life.
- Accepting and experiencing all the human feels: self-doubt, joy, discouragement, belly laughter, fear, love for herself and others. 
- Practicing Embracing All Facets of her Personality; and Recognizing that her Diversity Affords her the Ability to Meet People Where They Are.
- Experiences the Joy of Not Taking herself Too Seriously and The Ability to Laugh at herself. 
- Practicing Patience While Experiencing the Big Feels, Because They Are impermanent….


- Practicing Valuing Life…(whatever that looks like to you) because of its’ impermanence.